


Inconstant Imhar, Cunning, Callous

by homsantoft (tofsla)



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Avvar Culture and Customs, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-03-24
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-05-28 18:40:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6340831
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tofsla/pseuds/homsantoft
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A god-spirit wants a purpose. The Herald wants Dorian and the Iron Bull to learn to get along.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [veilfire](https://archiveofourown.org/users/veilfire/gifts).



> For Kay, who gave me the following prompt:
> 
> "magical bond shenanigans! early in the inquisition timeline bull and dorian are hit with a spell that forces them to stay within a few feet from one another."
> 
> I hope by "spell" you meant "accidental invocation of a very bored spirit."
> 
> Edited: messed up my own timeline, all mentions of "inquisitor" now changed to "herald," thank you for your patience with my scattered brain.

Here once the Avvar ruled. Their remnants are layered onto the landscape, between the elves who came before and the lowlanders who came after. Avvar marks upon the stone of elven ruins kept fresh by their descendants, Avvar paths through the mountains where Fereldans now walk with their dogs and their goats. Avvar spirits whispering in forgotten caves, mouths newly thrown open by the magical upheaval of the war. 

It is one such cave they walk, the floor cracked and uneven and slippery with algae, when the thing occurs. 

This is how it happens:

Cautious step by cautious step, they make their way down into the waiting dark. Their torches seem to provide only a very small pool of light by which to see; the Mark on Kos' hand is almost brighter. Unfriendly and harsh and so entirely unlike its bearer.

"Are you certain," Cassandra says, a little too loudly for the confined space, and pauses to let the fragmented echoing shadows of her voice die away, "that this is entirely wise? The cave seems to run deep below the mountain, and we are unprepared. We might send for scouts instead."

Kos' laugh is muted. "I think we'll manage. There's a rift here somewhere. I want it closed." Flickering green light. Kos' horns and the Iron Bull's throw unnerving shadows across the walls. 

Two mages, a Seeker and a Qunari spy walk into a cave. But what is the punchline to be?

The Bull's hand on Dorian's back, catching him as he begins to slip. Dorian curses, startles; thinks for a terrible queasy moment that it is the Bull's inexplicable attempt to save him that will cause his fall. But the Bull is, after all, very strong.

"Let go of me, if you please," Dorian says, too sharp, too unnerved. "You needn't trouble to pretend we're friends."

"Don't need to trip and throw yourself into my arms if it's like that, Dorian," the Bull says. "Could just ask, if you're interested."

Dorian hopes he does not shiver noticeably. One ought not show fear; one knows better. One ought not show anything else, either. "In placing myself at the mercy of a Qunari? I assure you, I value my capacity for independent thought rather more highly than that."

"Ouch," the Bull says, aggravatingly unpained. Unashamed of himself, of what his people—

Never mind that.

What must one do to get a rise? The Bull is so open and so closed at once. People find him—what? Unthreatening? Ludicrous.

The warmth of the Bull's hand fades from the space between Dorian's shoulderblades.

"You might try not assuming the worst," Kos says from ahead of them, but a little absently; two steps more, and Dorian understands why.

The narrow passage of the cave has opened here into a round chamber, statues placed at regular intervals around its circumference. In itself this would not be terribly remarkable, but there is—a feeling. Call it a feeling.

"Oh," Dorian says.

"What is it?" Cassandra asks sharply, and then falters herself. " _Oh._ "

"If this is about demon crap I can't see," the Bull says, irritable now in a way that Dorian couldn't make him, "I'm—"

"Hush," Kos says.

Dorian expects argument, but the Bull only nods, a neat clean gesture—a soldier's gesture, of course. 

Kos walks the chamber with slow determination, as though following an unseen path. If Dorian focuses he can see that this is in fact the case: spirit-lines, of a sort, laid to be followed like a thread in a maze.

Cassandra is watching the Herald with a careful intensity that surprises Dorian a little. Perhaps he thought that she would watch them and their magic with the dispassionate eye of a Templar. On occasion, she does. But this is not that. This is—what? 

Interest?

Kos' breath sighs, becomes a whispered chorus in the high dome of the cave roof. "Never mind. I thought I had something."

"You do not know the purpose of the path," Cassandra says flatly. "It was made to lead to something, certainly. But perhaps it is best we do not learn what."

Kos shrugs, one shouldered. A smile. "You could have stopped me earlier."

"It does not feel—" Cassandra shakes her head. "No matter. Search the chamber, in any case. There are spirits here, and whatever their nature, we must be careful."

"Ugh," the Bull says.

Blind and deaf among the murmuring stones. Dorian might feel sympathy for him, were he a little less concerned about being stabbed in the back.

They search. 

Something in this chamber stretches after a thing it cannot reach. There is no sense of malice, and that must have been what Cassandra had begun to say, before she remembered herself; but that need not mean so very much. Does a sword hate flesh?

The mouths of the unforgivably ugly statues are as dark as the mouth of the cave, as gaping.

"What _is_ this place?" Cassandra asks, voice no more than a murmur now, face turned up to examine a statue more closely. "I feel almost that it measures us. Perhaps after all we ought—"

But in this moment, several things happen at once; among them, the important thing, the one that will prove to be of immense significance to Dorian for some time to come.

So:

On the far side of the chamber, Kos bends over something unseen, mark flaring wildly. 

The Bull, straightening sharply as though looking for the source of some unseen attack, says: "What the—"

And Dorian experiences a violent yank below his ribs which has him stumbling, for the second time that day, quite nearly straight into the Bull's arms. The sensation of something fluttering across his head, down the back of his neck, there and gone.

"—leave," Cassandra finishes, turning. And then, frantic, " _Herald._ "

"I," Kos says, and, "what?"

One ought to turn to see what is happening between them, there on the far side of the chamber.

But Dorian feels—he feels—

"What the crap is happening?" the Bull snaps, and he is—

Afraid. Genuinely afraid.

Dorian ought not know that he is afraid.

"I think," Kos says faintly, "I may have made a mistake."

And oh, that is _certainly_ true.

Up, up, to the surface, to the sun—all in a rush, as though it could make any difference now. If one falls more than a few steps behind the Bull one stumbles, one's entire being lurching, and so one must accept the indignity of the Bull's hand wrapped huge and strong around one's arm, dragging one on through the dizzying shadows.

Gasping in the afternoon sun, unbalanced again by the sheer normalcy of the day, Dorian and the Bull stare at one another in anxious confusion. 

"Back to camp," Cassandra says. "This instant."

No arguments from Kos in that moment. But later, returned to the relative security of the nearest encampment, a great many; Cassandra and Kos on the edge of the cliff beyond the camp, talking rapidly with their voices pitched low, the ongoing rise and fall of it. Sharp emphasis caries. Compromised. Life. What—thinking.

Understand.

"Would've thought you'd want to join in," the Bull says. He sits very close beside Dorian; necessity. His voice is tense, as tense as his shoulders, as the unhappy line of his back. His awareness of Dorian itches down his spine, hunches him forward; feeds back into Dorian's awareness of him. A strange, echoing thing. Flashes of sensation, of emotion. Sudden unwelcome insight.

"Oh, yes," Dorian says. "I'm certain arguing about a thing we don't understand but which has undeniably happened will make it ever so much better. If I only had a real library at my disposal I might—"

A noise of frustration. 

He might what?

Well, he might do something, at least. One finds oneself bound, and not in the way one generally prefers; one must be able to work out some method of _un_ binding. Comparable magic from other sources—Tevinter has nothing of the kind that he is aware of, nothing which exists as a known cultural form. One would not tie people together in this way—and oh, they are tied, body and mind. Mutual understanding is not necessary, nor intimacy; these are not things one would typically force, although people must try, of course. In private, guiltily. No academic debates to read on _that_ topic.

There may exist things of a less balanced nature made to inflict upon slaves, however. Voyeuristic, controlling—these things one may reasonably be, as a Magister. These things one may write about.

His nauseated horror at even having been able to imagine the thing has the Bull jolting away from him. Feeling—what?

Shame? It must be shame. Hot and prickling at the base of the throat, a bur lodged above the sternum.

" _Kaffas,_ " Dorian says. The warmth of the Bull's arm fades from his skin. He misses it; of course he misses it. A spirit demands that he miss it. Hopefully a spirit, and not the other thing. "It wasn't about you."

The Bull makes a little sound in his throat, a suppressed grunt that might mean anything.

It means a faint thread of relief, wound through a thousand things that are frightening and unwelcome and incomprehensible.

The Bull is unreadable. It's why Dorian feared him. Fears, say fears, hold that present tense. The man is a spy, a Qunari, no way of knowing— 

Dorian reads him now; cannot understand how to stop. Oh, no, not his thoughts, and thank the Maker for that; but his state, his way of being. The Bull is afraid, scared to the edge of reason, and still his face is only slightly irritated, the sort of look he'd give an inconvenient tree root or a notched blade.

"Next time the Herald of Andraste decides to touch some piece of magical crap," the Bull says, "let's be on the other side of the Frostbacks."

"This entire business does seem a trifle unfair," Dorian says. 

Well, if they cannot find any common ground in general, they can at least agree that this is ludicrous. Of course the Herald wouldn't be the one to suffer the consequences of stumbling across unknown magic. Kos may have been marked the last time, but everyone else died.

What a beautiful moment of Qunari-Tevinter solidarity. Bitter humour to the thought.

"How long do we have to put up with this crap," the Bull says.

"If I only knew what the purpose of the thing was," Dorian says, "I might be able to offer some meaningful speculation. I suppose we'll at least return to Haven now. Assuming we don't have the remarkable good fortune to be released from this farce sooner—"

"Hah," the Bull says.

"No," Dorian agrees. "I suppose not. Well, I suppose there's nothing for it. If you refrain from displays of savagery I will attempt to keep from springing demons on you, and we'll do our level best to pretend that this is not happening to us."

"I only display my savagery for people who ask nicely," the Bull says, in a good impression of himself. 

"Now that I don't believe," Dorian says. 

Neither of their hearts are really in it.

Dorian sighs, and leans his forehead against his raised knees, and wishes that he could only relax and enjoy the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck as well as it deserves. At least for a time.


	2. Chapter 2

And yes, certainly, for a space of several hours it does appear that they will be returning to Haven. The process of packing is begun, rather hindered by the limitations placed upon Dorian's freedom of movement, and on the Bull's. They have been based in this camp, by the living tumble of water on its way from lake to plain, for some weeks; a great deal of work to be done in stabilising the area. A great deal, consequently, to clear up before they can leave the camp to the scouts.

Must you be so careful about your wretchedly ugly clothes—yeah, well, not all of us count on having someone else to make our clothes neat again after stuffing them all into a sack—

Oh, it's easy to fight. In turmoil, why should one not? They are not, have never been friends.

Dorian, a cutting response on the tip of his tongue, is interrupted by the rush of hooves up the steep cliff path, someone with an errand too urgent to care overly much for the danger to the horse.

"Herald," a voice calls. "Herald! Word from the Nightingale—"

Dorian and the Bull exchange a pointed look. The Bull, finally, is the one to shrug; to turn and make for the tent entrance, slow enough, leaving Dorian plenty of time to follow. 

What an irritating piece of consideration. As though the Bull should be thought less dangerous because of a little kindness.

Oh, be honest: it stings because he is kinder than Dorian, more liked than Dorian.

Because he seems kind, amusing—because he is allegedly good in bed—because of these things, people allow themselves to forget. The self-proclaimed Qunari spy. A good sort.

Ludicrous.

 _Says the 'vint, when we're fighting 'vints,_ the Bull said.

Oh, for goodness sake. 

The worst part is that the Bull was entirely correct. They are, in status, quite alike.

But never mind it. 

The messenger.

Kos waves them over.

A serious expression. "I was planning to let you two take some time to undo this mess—for which I'm sorry, by the way," this last prompted by a cough from Cassandra. Amusing, in any other world. The Bull laughs anyway—of course he does. "But I'm going to have to press south, and you're all the backup I have. Some Avvar warlord would like my head."

Dorian snorts. "And so you thought you'd offer it up on a platter? I do hope you're not going to ask one of us to detach it for you."

"There are hostages involved," Kos says.

Dorian feels the shift in the Bull—a physical one, focused tension, but that's subtle compared to the way he snaps to attention in his head.

"Ugh," the Bull says, one of his standard grumbling complaints, as though mildly annoyed. "Alright, I guess we're doing this."

Kos nods. "Look—I know you don't get along. But—"

"Hey," the Bull says. "We're professionals when it counts."

He must feel Dorian's own inner tension, but he ignores it, like they've both ignored everything so far.

Dorian just nods agreement. In truth, he's not particularly worried about screaming arguments or whatever it is Kos expects. Arguments he can take in stride. 

He's terribly good at them.

"Yes, yes, certainly," he says. "We are, at least, nearly ready to move. The Bull has a few things left, and I fancy we have some things to discuss privately besides."

"Sounds bad," the Bull says, outwardly amiable.

"Terrible, I promise you," Dorian says, with an acidity that is regrettably rather more genuine than the Bull's good humour.

Terrible indeed.

"What, then," the Bull says, as they duck back into the tent. "Let's have it."

He is so large. So very present. In an enclosed space, one might say—but truly, his physicality would in no way be reduced by a change of environment. Dorian has always found him rather inescapable, a sore spot that he can't resist testing, over and over again. Comical, almost, to come to the South only to reenact some tedious Northern drama.

And all the same:

"It may have escaped your notice," Dorian says, "but we seem to be inconveniently bound to one another."

"No, really?" the Bull says, lightly. "Crap."

Dissonance, always the dissonance. The Bull's mind pulls in one direction and his words in another. Oh, he lies less than one might expect, but has he said an emotionally honest word since the cave?

" _Stop this,_ " Dorian snaps. "It's all very well to pretend that this is going to be a perfectly ordinary little jaunt into some dreary frozen marsh, but might I remind you that people are ever so fond of trying to kill us?"

"Yeah, I know," the Bull says. "I've been thinking about it."

Well.

One ought not be taken aback. One ought not be taken aback, especially, when the Bull can very well feel one's surprise.

"I see," Dorian says. "Would you care to enlighten me as to your no doubt _fascinating_ conclusions?"

"It's going to be a mess," the Bull says.

"Well, yes," Dorian says; rubs tiredly at his chin. "This much I had in fact reasoned out."

"I can't do shit if I don't get in close," the Bull says. "You can't do shit if you're surrounded. You're strong, but you're not a warrior. Also, we have to be good enough to let you get out of the way of my maul. That would be fine if we had each other's backs, but you don't trust me. And your magic creeps me out."

"That's remarkably forthcoming of you," Dorian says, processing the interesting omission in the Bull's line of reasoning only a moment after he speaks.

"Yeah," the Bull says, and there's finally a slightly petulant edge to his otherwise dispassionate tone. "Not like you won't know as soon as you cast."

Dorian closes his eyes, fingers pressed now to the crease between his brows. The threat of a headache has been pressing against the inside of his skull for hours now, and is finally beginning to spill over into real pain.

"I need more information," he says. Tries to force his face to relax. Tries to force his breathing to remain natural. I cannot fail, not again. What use is cleverness when it never—no, leave that thought. Leave Felix to what remains of his life. There are worse things than dying, he said, and he was not wrong.

A sick green sky.

Relax.

"Test the limits," the Bull says. "Right. Let's tell the boss we need an hour and some privacy."

"Yes, make it sound as though we're planning on public indecency, certainly," Dorian says, exhausted, exasperated, giving up on his attempts to stave off the miserable pain growing behind his eyes to glare at the Bull. "Whyever not!"

The Bull shrugs. "Hey, that's your dirty mind at work, big guy." But there's a flicker of amusement somewhere in there, under the tightness of his expression. Felt, not seen. Fragmentary, momentary.

The Bull lays his hand on Dorian's knee, pats it with what must be intended as reassurance.

It is the first time they have touched since—

It is the first time they have touched. Since.

It is—

It—

The Bull snarls something in Qunlat that means denial, rejection. Warding. Jolts away, snarls again when the unseen thread that hangs between them snaps taut. Sharp breaths, the edge of them harsh, rasping audibly in his throat.

Dorian holds himself in tense horror.

It is anything but reassuring, that touch. It is to fall into—into what? To fall. The jungle swelters. Fuck you, Vasaad says. Fuck you! Fuck the Qun! You know as well as I do that you wanted—

Shift the angle.

In half-overgrown ruins, the smell of blood in the close still air, swelling nausea in him after all these years. A dizzy awful thing. Maybe only because of whose blood it is. Red on the neck. Vasaad—Vasaad—

I should have had his back. We were always—and I—

Dorian recoils, in his own way, from the foreign object in his mind. Slams down his magic upon it, crushes it before it can play itself out.

"You didn't see anything," he says, shaken. "You—not a thing. And neither did I."

"Yeah," the Bull says. His face looks washed out. Through the red-brown canvas of the tent, all light is transformed; all the same, Dorian feels that he is drained of colour.

For his part, he feels cold and shivery with the shock of it. The smell of blood lingers in his nostrils, clogs his throat; spins his mind in other directions, a body folding, sending blood spilling along neat grooves—

He had dealt a good deal with freshly dead bodies by that time, and he knew too much about the way the slowly dying changed, the subtle shift in the face that said time was running out, that sickness was winning—but it was only then that he understood the process of transition. There is something vital, and then there is not.

How ironic, that the—the incident, call it the incident—should have improved his mastery of necromancy so.

Don't touch me now, don't see this, don't—

The Bull does not touch him.

"We're going to talk to the boss," the Bull says. "An hour. Some privacy."

"Yes," Dorian says. "Yes, I—I think that would be best, after all."


	3. Chapter 3

"Cast it again," the Bull says. Grits his teeth. Anxiety in waves between them, ripples that rebound and mingle. "On me this time. No more demonstrations. _Now._ "

It is no simple thing, this—outside of the heat of battle, outside of the mortuary houses, away from the dead and the dying, the spirits who long to touch the dead are elusive. They do not linger long, or travel far. And so here they sit, cross-legged upon the scrubby grass where a templar encampment has only recently been dismantled, where the smell of the pyre still hangs heavy and unsettling in the hazy air. Sticks in the throat.

How many such pyres will the people of the Inquisition light, before they are through?

Spirits.

It is not a coercion, this. Not a permanent binding. It is an encouragement, coaxing. Sharp lines in the air, there and gone. A suggestion:

Remember. Show it.

The Bull's jaw tightens. All of him tightens. Tense as the lines the dancers in Minrathous use for their tricks, to balance in the air, to fall and never hit the ground, although they are not mages.

Terror, suppressed.

Something like this: I will die, I will die, I am dying—

Something like this: a templar's breath rattles in his throat. Lung pierced, iron on the tongue. The worst is not the pain—it's the numbness, the slipping and sliding. An endless fall into darkness. 

All of us must die.

Something like this: oh yes, this is what they felt, all the people you failed.

Who else will you fail? 

Who will fail you?

All these things Dorian has experienced. Draw these spirits to yourself, Tation said. You will not understand until you feel their touch upon you.

The terror, of course, was incidental. But he has made good use of it since.

Now, he feels it as though for the first time. Stand between two mirrors, silver and glass. Stand with an invisible hand curling around your throat, the sharp pin-prick of claws that draw no blood.

Enough.

He wrenches himself from the spell, or, perhaps, wrenches the spell from himself; casts it loose, says with sigils and will to the spirit that it is free.

He feels the working of it more keenly now, just as he felt the force of it. So many things are different about fighting here: no subtle assassination plots for him now, only blood, always blood. Sweat, running down the back of the neck as one breathes too hard under the cool sun. Tears, certainly, on occasion. But all these matters of form aside, his magic is his magic. He knows it more intimately than a craftsman could know any well-worn tool.

The Bull's twisting, shaking awareness scraping against his own in panic makes it into something strange from beginning to end. Unknown. He sees himself as though from without, the Altus, haughty and aristocratic, black smoke and flickering purple spirit-lights curling around his hands, shadowing and illuminating his face. Sinister.

The spirit departs.

He is himself, Dorian Pavus. Inhabiting his body, but not only his body:

The awareness of the Bull remains. No simple gesture of release can sever it.

"Fucking _Tevinter_ ," the Bull snarls. His hand trembles as he lifts it to wipe his face. It is forcibly stilled. Another act of will.

"You did ask," Dorian says. Perhaps he sounds harsher than he intended. Sharper. "Demanded, in fact. This was _not my idea._ "

The Bull screws his eye shut. When he opens it again, there's a glint of bad temper there.

"Learning this damn creepy shit in the first place was your idea. I need to be able to fight through it. What do you suggest, since you have so many opinions."

"Necromancy," Dorian says, "is an honoured tradition. It is in its truest form a means to bring peace to the dead. It is for when healers fail. Please _excuse_ me if I make use of the tools I have to hand in unconventional ways in the interests of all of us making it through this alive."

"Yeah," the Bull says. Petulant. 

"Be glad I am no blood mage," Dorian says. "Maker knows few enough of my countrymen can claim as much. I know necromancy in part so that I need not resort to blood, and yes, of course my teachers disapproved of the application. You have no fucking idea—"

He breaks off. Snaps his teeth shut on confession.

Whatever the Bull feels of his mood, it softens him, if only minutely. Resentment simmers, distaste, but the harshest edge of anger is gone.

"On Seheron," the Bull says, conversational, "the Magisters brought slaves with them just to sacrifice. If they ran out of slaves, any native would do. One day, there was this kid—human kid, maybe ten, I'm no good at human ages. He lived in a house by the market, used to see him there running errands for his family. Tailors. Good enough people. One day, I'm doing my rounds, this kid is fetching cloth. I see him running, like any other day, but there's tension—you get this feeling, after a while. Itching at the back of your neck. Means your body knows something's wrong and your brain hasn't caught up yet. And then there's this fucking Tevinter, stepping out from behind one of the stalls. Waiting for me, see? And he grabs this kid by the neck, and—"

"Kills him," Dorian says. Heavy, sick horror, without a spirit in reach. Blood rising in spirals from open wounds. Shocked eyes. A dying body that cannot even scream. "I wish I could say this was the sort of thing that only happened in war zones."

"That's what you get," the Bull says, "when a whole class of people stops thinking anyone below them is real. _That's_ what Tevinter is. Blood or necromancy or ice. It's the point of view. That's what does the damage."

He is so terribly tired. Dorian wants to touch him. Although he is not feeling well-disposed towards the entire situation, the Bull's muted, grey emotions seem to require action, a gesture of comfort, a gesture that will draw him out of his past, ground him.

But to touch would be the opposite of comfort.

And besides, he _is_ still angry.

"I cannot argue," Dorian says. "But it isn't only that."

The Bull grunts. Skepticism. Well, else could he have expected?

They sit in silence, letting their moods go as best they can. The chilly dampness of the ground settles into Dorian's skin, seeps into his bones. His knees ache with it.

"What are we to do," he says, at length. "We may not be friends, but it gives me no pleasure to inflict your every fear on you over and over again, however much you think that will allow you to acclimatise." Take the full force of it as practice so that the ambient effect of standing near the caster grows less. It is all well and good in theory, but then you're screaming inside and the whole thing seems distinctly less sensible. "Besides," he adds, "none of this will be of any use once you hit me in the head on a backswing."

One thing upon which they can agree: one must collect all the information one can, order it, make sense of it. Experiments must be repeated. How many paces can they take from each other before the tension begins to build? For how many steps more is it tolerable?

The results, all taken, are depressing. Yes, they can put a distance between them which is greater than the reach of the Bull's plundered maul, or of the greataxe with the quartermaster in Haven supplied him with when the haft of his own weapon cracked in battle. But it is the very limit, nausea-tinged, off-balance.

No way to fight.

The Bull exhales heavily.

"Don't need the maul. I can do close quarters fighting, knives or short swords. Fist to the face goes a long way when you're my size. Pretty good at not killing my own guys, anyway."

He aches, and it settles in Dorian's chest, below the sternum. It might be nostalgia, of a kind. A sharp-edged and cruel breed. It wavers on the edge of grief, but why should it not? 

No joy unmixed, no sorrow pure.

But this is the thing, the meaning of the words: they are a peace-cup, held out for him to drink of, Par Vollen to Tevinter. Farcical. And yet this is what they have.

No, they are not friends.

"Fire," Dorian says, defeated by the gesture. "Heavy barriers. The dead will not walk on my account, for the moment. It has to—we have to make it work."

The ache fades. It is relief. It is to feel the body relax, fractionally. Better to compromise one's strength than to lose it altogether. 

There.

"One more thing," Dorian says, and Maker knows he would rather not. "Close quarters fighting. We will, you know, touch one another."

"Yeah," the Bull says.

"I saw nothing," Dorian says. Feels, ludicrously, compelled to say. A liar meets a dishonest man. He sighs. "I would prefer to avoid not seeing anything again. But you must admit—"

"Yeah," the Bull says again.

"Work with me here, if you would," Dorian says, and knows the Bull must feel how irritation flashes hot through him, settles in his hands, forced into stillness although they want to clench.

A disgusted noise, deep in the throat.

The Bull holds out his hand, palm up. Two fingers cut short, third phalanges lost in some long-gone fight, the skin uneven over the stumps.

They mirror one another now in trepidation.

The Bull's palm is warm under his fingertips, dry, the skin a little rough. Deeply lined.

So:

Imagine how you appear through another person's eyes.

The Bull makes himself larger, harsher. In his idea of Dorian's mind's eye, the scars on his face grow deeper, the set of his mouth harsher, his horns loom wide and heavy. SIck anxiety, desperate awareness, he thinks I can hurt him. 

He's not wrong.

There is a war, and there is propaganda, and the Bull transforms himself into a parody of it because he thinks—

Their hands jolt apart. Silent, they measure one another.

"I can't think what to do about this," Dorian says, in open frustration. A sweeping gesture with his hand that nearly comes up against the Bull's arm. "If I only had my books—"

"I thought," the Bull says, "you were meant to be clever."

"Only when it counts for nothing," Dorian snaps. Father, you have bred me perfectly, intelligent and handsome and quick on my feet, and I will never be anything you want all the same. 

Felix, Felix, beloved brother I never had, always close to the surface of my mind. 

Where are you now?

"Not what the boss had to say about Redcliffe," the Bull says. "Guess it was a fluke."

Dorian would like to close his eyes against the memory, against the pale body of a thing that had once been Felix, against the crumpled form of Gereon, against demons pouring through an open door and the Bull bleeding out on the floor. The curve of the back of Sera's skull all the wrong shape, her eyes blank.

You'll have to do better than that.

Yes, it was a fluke. He could as well have sent them all to the void.

"You are specifically attempting to make me so angry I'll have some sort of infuriated revelation," Dorian says, pointing a finger accusingly at the Bull. "Don't try to deny it."

"Yeah, that's what I'm doing," the Bull says. "Should I keep going, or are you out of your own head yet?"

Unkind words. He _knows_. Of course he does. He's in Dorian's head quite nearly as much as Dorian is, after all. What has ever motivated Dorian better than spite?

"If you know so much," Dorian says, snaps again, how well the Bull brings that out in him, "how about you come up with something?"

"Fucked up magic isn't my subject," the Bull says, and now he's snapping too, anger again, is this the bit where they resort to screaming at one another until the Herald is forced to come and separate them as though they were children brawling in a Circle? "I figured maybe the one who claims to be a time traveller and who can definitely raise the damn restless dead might have some kind of an idea, but I guess you're all hot air."

"You," Dorian says, voice rising, " _you—_ vishante kaffas, why must you—"

The Bull shrugs. Blank-faced. "A tool for every job."

"That is perhaps the most callous thing I've ever heard," Dorian snarls, entirely unfairly. "If you think this will get us anywhere except murdered by bandits when they come to see what we're shouting about—"

"Oh yeah? You just going to take it? Because I gotta say, giving it to people like this isn't my style, but if your head is stuck so far up your own arse that you can shit on your _own_ tongue—"

"You are impossible!" Dorian says. 

It is a game, a strategy. By the Bull's own admission, by the stillness of his actual emotions below the surface of their minds. And here, then, is the most terrible part:

It works. 

He never could stand to be bested, and the pleasure of a dramatic exit is denied to him.

Dorian deflates.

"Sit still," he says. Tired, now. Angry, but no inferno. Holds himself straight and cool. "I'm going to try something."

Twist the fade. It shimmers opalescent across the skin, sinks into it, leaving only the slightest distortion of the air around them behind.

Dorian holds out his hand.

Touch. Only fingertips, this time. Only skin.

"Right," the Bull says. "Guess that worked out. I should rile you up more often, huh?"

"You very much should not," Dorian says. "Unless you would like me to return the favour."

"Hey," the Bull says, "if that's what it takes."

Dorian stares. Oh, how could he not? 

"You are an extremely peculiar man," he says.

The Bull's chest heaves when he laughs.

"You love it," he says, and the provocation is so obvious, would be obvious even without their feelings tangled together, but what else is it that lies beneath? There _is_ something. A feeling on the back of the neck. Your body knows something is happening, but your brain hasn't caught up.

"This will have to do," Dorian says. The sun has begun to sink, gold, rose, burning ships outside Qarinus. "We'll be travelling all night as it is. Back to camp."

"Yeah," the Bull says, and Dorian casts a barrier so that they can help each other up off the cold ground, limbs sore and stiff from sitting, from tension.

For a breath or two, there is something between them that could almost be companionship. Dorian waits for the Bull to say something crude, something nasty that is all the same a deflection. But of course he doesn't. Starting those sorts of fights is Dorian's role, and he is far too tired for it.

Strange, that its absence rather than its presence should break the moment.

The Bull turns away. And Dorian sighs, and follows him, and pretends that he has a choice.


End file.
